In this guide we cover the candidate experience and what a job application looks like from their point of view.

There are a variety of ways the candidate may enter your hiring pool. If the candidate applies through a 3rd party site like Indeed or ZipRecruiter, an account will automatically be created for them through our current integration. If they go through your careers page to your Nimble job board, then they will be prompted to log in or create an account before applying. For this guide, we will walk through the candidate experience directly from the district job board for a first time applicant.

When the candidate reaches the job board they’ll see your logo in the top left corner, followed by default verbiage and the link to log in for those candidates who already have an existing account in Nimble.

Below this you’ll see the search bar and a set of filters that allows the candidate to narrow the list of jobs based on keywords, categories and grade levels. The candidate has the ability to sort by start date, category, salary and job deadline. Including these details when you build out the job posting will help candidates find what they're looking for.

If you’ve starred any jobs when editing the postings on your internal jobs page, then you will also see those jobs at the top of the list on your job board.

Once a candidate has identified a role they are interested in, they will click into the jobs line item to review the job description and then click the apply button to continue to the next page.

Alternatively, a candidate can also apply to a posting directly using the public link for sharing. This link can be found on the preview page when you are editing a job from the internal jobs page. This link is most often used when you no longer want the job to be listed on your external job board but you still have a few more candidates that you’d like to encourage to apply. Keep in mind that you cannot share the URL link in your browser with candidates — instead, you should always use the public link for sharing.

When the candidate applies, either by using the direct link to a job or applying via your job board, they will then be prompted to Sign in or Sign up in Nimble.

Once logged in, the candidate will see a prompt to create their profile. In this section, candidates enter basic information about themselves including contact information, mailing address and the federally recommended EEO questions for gender and ethnicity. These questions are required and the responses are shown in aggregate on your pipeline dashboard.

They will also be prompted to upload a resume here on the first page and you can determine whether or not this step is visible/required when you are building out the job posting on your internal jobs page.

On the 2nd page of the application the candidate will see the custom application experience you created when editing this job. This may include some of the default sections we recommend like work experience, credentials, references, etc.

This is also where the candidate will be required to include how they heard about the organization. Super Admin have the ability to edit this list of possible recruitment sources in order to track and analyze recruitment data from the pipeline dashboard.

On the 3rd page of the application you will see any custom questions you have created and associated with this job posting. Once the candidate has filled out any other optional or required questions for this job, they will then be directed to a final confirmation page, where they can review their answers prior to submitting their application.

The system automatically saves the candidate’s edits every 10 seconds, but they will also be prompted to save their changes as they move through each page of the application. If they are unable to complete the application, it will automatically be saved as a draft for the candidate to return to later. You may need to send out an email to reminder to some candidates who leave their application in draft for more than a few days. If you decide you want to archive a candidate’s draft application you can do so using the bulk status change feature.

Once they click submit, the candidate will be redirected to their dashboard, where they can view and edit existing job applications and documents and/or navigate back to your job board to apply to more jobs.

They also have the ability to withdraw an application in draft status. When a candidate clicks the withdraw button their application will automatically be deleted from the system.

The candidate can also come back later in the process to add professional references or complete another section of their application. To do so, they would log in, navigate to profile in the top right corner and then edit references or any additional sections on the second page of the application.

Lastly, a candidate can answer the optional geographical, grade level or school type preference questions by clicking the add your job preferences button on the top of the page or in the navigation dropdown in the top right of the page. You and your hiring managers can filter based on these preferences in your candidate list, to find candidates who may be a good fit for certain types of roles.

To learn more about other features in Nimble, click here or email us at support@hirenimble.com.